Mother Tongue as an Asset in Developing l2 Reading Comprehension Skill Among Iranian EFL Learners

Farzaneh Iranmanesh,Mohammad Golshan

doi:10.5296/ijssr.v6i1.12142

Abstract

This study attempted to explore the effect of teachers switching to l1 on developing l2 reading comprehension among learners and to justify the assumption that their switching to l1 can be purposeful, following pedagogical goals. To this respect two groups of students majoring at English teaching were selected from intact classes ,one as the control group, the other as the experimental receiving l2-only and l2 plus l1switching instruction respectively for their reading comprehension course with the same teacher under equal condition (highly attempted).The result showed that non/low proficient l2 readers who rely more on translation in the process of comprehending English texts made more advantage of the teacher’s implementing strategy and developed more than other participants. That is; apart from various reading strategies utilized by EFl learners, teachers’ code switching as a compensation strategy to clarify the complex unknown (assumed for the learners) syntactic/semantic structures plays a prominent role in facilitating the struggling task of comprehension among learners. It also justified the premise that insisting on l2-only instruction in reading comprehension is not facilitating but frustrating and time consuming. However, systematic switching to l1 can be developmental and timesaving through making positive effect on comprehension, motivation and confidence. Hence this study can provide language teachers with pedagogical implications for non-proficient l2 readers particularly at the early years of learning process.

Highlights

It is quite evident that second / foreign language learning is a time processing issue
It is evident that the mean scores for control group did not change significantly before and after instruction, in the experimental group the mean scores change to a higher level from pretest to post test
According to the significance level of ≥ .05 with more than 95% confidence it can be said that there was no significant difference between the scores of the two groups before the instruction and teacher’s implementing code switching strategy (t=1.20, df=44, p≥.05)

Summary

Introduction

It is quite evident that second / foreign language learning is a time processing issue. Reading is one of second / foreign language learning skills often a prelude to a speaking or writing activity (Harmer, 2001) involves comprehension process with regard to readers’ preexisting knowledge of the world, of textual features, different reading strategies and models and several other factors each taking time per se. Trugill argued that the concept of code switching is most commonly used within the sociolinguistic field of studies and it is commonly used by bilingual speakers often to signal two different identities at once (as cited in Berg, 2013). Cook argued that teachers should resort to the L1 if it is apparent that using the target language would be inefficient and/ or problematic for the learner and when the cost of the TL is too great (as cited in Tornbull & Arnett, 2002). As a way of facilitating and time saving pedagogy the present study seeks the answer to these research questions:

Methods

Results

Conclusion